AMD teases dual-GPU card

AMD's guerrilla marketers are at it again. The company has apparently sent out envelopes labelled "top secret" to a number of tech sites and the envelopes contained photos of the editors, with a note that says "wouldn't you agree that two is better than one?"

Yes two is better than one, unless we are talking about heart attacks, hernias, ulcers etc. We didn't get a photo, since our news editor's head wouldn't fit on into the frame. Punters speculate that the stunt has something to do with graphics, dual-Hawaii graphics to be exact.

A dual-GPU card based on the huge Hawaii GPU would secure AMD's throne in the graphics space and we've heard talk of dual Hawaii cards in the past. They would end up massive and pricey - Hawaii isn't a very frugal piece of silicon, so the card would need a lot of juice and cooling.

It is unlikely that AMD would go for a full Hawaii implementation, as most of its dual-GPU cards from years gone by were based on Pro chips, not XT chips. This means it is likely to go for a dual R9 290 setup instead of a dual R9 290X design. Even so it would end up very fast and very big - after all we are talking about 12.4 billion transistors on a single card.

AMD has a good track record when it comes to asymmetric warfare and we have a soft spot for its guerrilla marketing stunts. Hawaii sales are good, as the cards deliver great performance and value for money. However, the latter isn't as great as it could be due to strong demand - the prices were jacked up to reflect this. There's a lot of demand from cyptocurrency miners, too, although they tend to prefer Tahiti cards, as they offer better value for money.